40 Under 40

Judy Anne Gold, 36

Chief mayoral policy aide,
City of Chicago

She's the top policy aide to the Democratic mayor of Chicago. But the Republican governor of Illinois publicly calls Judy Gold his "sixth daughter."

Public policy wonk, feminist and networker extraordinaire, she's a woman whose combination of brains and effervescent style has enabled her to work with a wide variety of the city's power centers without making a fatal number of enemies.

"She doesn't do things by half. She's very intense," says Daley Chief of Staff Julia Stasch, who credits Ms. Gold with drafting the state's new earned-income tax credit, creating the new Lake Calumet environmental park and serving as a key, if unofficial, liaison between City Hall and Springfield.

Yet she charms, too.

"She has served as my social conscience," says Gov. George Ryan, who named Ms. Gold to chair his Commission on the Status of Women after she crossed party lines to back him over the more conservative Democratic nominee, Glenn Poshard, in the 1998 gubernatorial race.

A graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago Law School, she picked up an interest in government while serving with former Daley Chief of Staff Gery Chico at Altheimer & Gray, the Chicago law firm her father helped found. That interest was piqued when she took a leave of absence to work in the Clinton White House as liaison to national women's groups.

She insists there's no big plan for her life. With a proposed revamp of the property tax system and other interagency projects on her plate for later this year, "I like what I'm doing now."

Greg Hinz

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